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Stealing moon rocks from NASA

By Jonathon Keats

RETURNING from vacation in the summer of 2002, NASA geochemist Dr Everett Gibson learned that a 275-kilogram safe had vanished from his lab. Situated in one of the most secure buildings on the planet, the lab was an implausible target for even the world’s greatest crime syndicates – despite the fact that the Apollo lunar samples were stored there and the street price of moon rocks was estimated at about &dollar;5 million per gram.

The theft of the safe, which contained 101.5 grams of material, including samples from every lunar landing, was in fact stranger and more pedestrian …